"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you control the meaning of words, you control the people who must use the words."
-Philip K. Dick

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

A moment of calm

After much stress and feeling sick I'm happy to sit down at last without a ton to do. I'm feeling a lot better on the sick front as well. Mild headache, but nothing big.

Finally shaved my crazy writer's beard from the weekend's bed sick writing of the poem for Eastern Thinking class. You can always tell when I've been writing. I look like hell slept in a ditch. I just forget to take care of myself. It's kind of fun.

I once did sleep in a ditch. It was actually nice. Although discovering the next morning that a 6'3 naked man had almost tripped over me while running through the night was not so nice. I made a note to myself to avoid unnecessary ditch sleeping in the future. So far, I've kept to it.

Got on a Bob Dylan kick again. I think Black Diamond Bay and Changing of the Guards must be his two most underrated songs on major releases. The first from his album Desire, which is arguably the last album of his 70s prime. The second is the opening of its follow up: Street Legal. Street Legal is an album that is hurt by the fact that it shows the first hints of the experimentation that would lead (technically Street Legal followed, but not by release dates) to At Budokan, the only album Dylan has recorded that actually pissed me off. There have been some I didn't like or felt were really weak, but At Budokan is just the biggest, grandest, most ambitious middle finger to the ears you could ask for. I can't sit through it all in one go. It's like he's trying to piss on his best songs. There is one exception though. He does do a pretty good reggae version of Don't Think Twice, It's Alright. But yeah, Street Legal is guilty by association. It's by no means as solid as Desire. On the activist side of things, No Time To Think lacks the focus and cause of Hurricane, and features some really annoying horns in the place of Dylan's trademark harmonica. The sax worked for Changing of the Guards, but it really should have been left there and as a solo on Senor (Tales of Yankee Power). Lyrically it is quite good though. Where the album is strong, it's really strong. Senor would go on to be a Grateful Dead standard, and "Where Are You Tonight?" is fantastic.

I'm kind of on a roll of seeing really good movies on the weekends. The weekend before last was The Constant Gardener, and this one was Good Night, and Good Luck. Highly recommend both. Can't wait to see what this one will bring.

0 Comments:

Links to this post:

About Me

I am a man of many hats, a writer, filmmaker, electronic composer, theater assistant, and an all around rabid film geek trying to figure out life after UVA (Class of '09 - BA majoring in English with lots of Media Studies on the side) in the big old world. I'm currently trying to make a film, write a novel, help my wife with her theater company, and become a programmer. I am also very interested in computer gaming design and music composition. I've scored theater trailers, plays and small films, and am interested in expanding to commercials, other stage projects, and indie games.